The other day while waiting for a bus, I was thinking about how city buses should be smaller and run more frequently. Instead of a 40-seater every 15 minutes, they could run a 10-seater every 5 minutes. (More precisely, they could run as frequently as necessary during rush hour to handle all the passengers—a bus a minute if necessary—but more spaced out at other times. For example, on weekend mornings the bus is never crowded, so they could run the much smaller buses with just slightly higher frequencies than they currently run big buses now.)
The advantages of my proposal are clear: the bus comes more frequently, also since the lag time is smaller, loading and unloading won’t take so much time, and as an extra bonus, you’ll probably skip a lot more stops because there are fewer people on the bus who might want to get off at any particular point. Also, I don’t know about fuel efficiency, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the fuel cost per passenger is lower because you’re not having to run these huge empty buses in off-peak hours. Finally, van-sized buses could maneuver better in traffic.
The only additional cost that I see is having to hire more bus drivers, but with unemployment at 9%, I don’t think it would be hard to find people to do this. What really irritates me are those huge, huge buses that take forever to fill up and take about a half hour just to go a few crosstown blocks. If they were broken up into vans, the wait would be less and the ride much more pleasant.
P.S. Yes, I know this isn’t one of the world’s most important problems. But it is a big expenditure, so why not try to do it right?
P.P.S. I’m sure there’s lots of research on this topic but it’s not something I’m at all informed on. The above are just my personal impressions.
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I’m generally allergic to libertarians bearing gifts, but this seems worth a shot:
http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/1997/curbrits.aspx
You’ll also have to take into account “road length” of the total accumulation of buses in service, as the increased congestion might reduce overall capacity.
The staffing costs tend to be the most expensive. The replacement of the new bendy buses with a modified Routemaster of yesteryear on London’s roads will run into costs of £60m, with reduced capacity and increased congestion. But hey, the mayor’s whole election campaign rested on it.
In addition, the articulated bus was designed to solve the problems you state. RFID card readers and multiple entry points reduce waiting times at stops, and a large deck means people can get on and off easily. This has allowed TfL to run certain routes with peak frequencies of buses every 3 minutes.
As you can tell, Londoners take these issues very seriously.
You’ve waved off the hiring more bus drivers problem by noting that unemployment is high so it would be relatively easy to hire more. Well, yes. But no. What’s a NYC bus driver’s salary these days? To follow one of your examples, if you ran smll buses at five-minute intervals instad of big buses at 15-minute intervals, you would need three times as many drivers; or — another of your alternatives — a bus a minute would require 15 tims as many drivers. And every one of those drivers would be drawing a salary. Easy to hire? Probably. Easy to pay? Hmm.
The last two comments nail it. Three small buses would cost 200% as much in labor as a single bus. The improved frequency of service could increase revenue and ridership; but most transit services in America operate at a loss as is, more service typically means more losses. It’s not a question of whether or not you can find people to drive the things – it’s a question of who’s going to pay them.
Sometimes I sit on the bus counting the minutes tick by as people try to shove dollar bills and coins into the fare box. I honestly think you could shave significant time off of those crosstown trips by doing something as simple as modernizing payment systems and other such minor improvements.
You would also have more people crowd the convenient smaller bus.
For example, if it takes me 30 minutes to get to a factory at 9 from my stop at a large apartment building, I will get on the bus at 8:30. Many of my coworkers will act similarly, and get on the bus that allows them to leave for work at the latest possible time. This 8:30 bus will become very crowded. Meanwhile, the 8:25 and 8:35 bus will be less crowded. The latter may only have the overflow of those who couldn’t fit on the smaller bus at 8:30. And they will then be 5 minutes late for work. Meanwhile, everyone could have fit on a larger bus.
The current recession shouldn’t play any role in your argument, unless you’d plan on switching the fleet back to big buses (and firing two thirds of the drivers) when the economy turns around again.
Sometimes I sit on the bus counting the minutes tick by as people try to shove dollar bills and coins into the fare box. I honestly think you could shave significant time off of those crosstown trips by doing something as simple as modernizing payment systems and other such minor improvements.
See, for example, the Oyster Card system in London.
Articulated buses can be 60 or 80 feet in length. They are proposed (oxymoronically as bus rapid transit) as a substitute for the more expensive but faster/efficient light/heavy rail systems. The problem is when these buses have to “articulate” through narrow city streets without dedicated busways to avoid traffic issues in mixed traffic.
What about allowing jeep-neys or tap-taps, as they are called in Haiti. Tap-taps are very colorful, e.g. one might have Jesus and a lamb on one side and Rambo with a machine gun on the other, etc., and proverbs running across the top front and sides. They run regular routes. I took a couple almost every day when I lived in Haiti, sometimes hanging onto the back of one.
I forget what they call these in NYC; I don’t think they are licensed but they could be. Do other US cities have them?
Reminds me of a pet peve about the meters in DC taxis: One draw back of meters in taxis in DC is that without meters cabs would take multiple simultaneous clients in the rain when demand was high (there were rules on this under the old system, not sure what they do/if they do now).
I guess the Brooking’s book linked above mentions jitneys (the NYC name?) but the focus seems to be on the idea of curbs as property (hmmm…I can see that being fraught with all kinds of neighborhood politics problems).
Ahh, tap-taps. Sitting next to a bucket of chicken feet was not pleasant and you never forget the sound of goats screaming like crazy when they are tied down and stored on top of a tap-tap going 80 mph. But still…
lim(AG’s argument) = cars.
A 40-seat bus can hold much more than 40 people. Vans don’t have standing room.
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